Racial Reconciliation

Unfolding Bethlehem's Fresh Initiative #3

Racial Harmony Sunday

Fresh Initiative 3. Racial Reconciliation. Against the
rising spirit of indifference, alienation, and hostility in our
land, we will embrace the supremacy of God's love to take new steps
personally and corporately toward racial reconciliation, expressed
visibly in our community and in our church

The more I ponder what the nature of the church is to be, and
the more I watch the turmoil of our multi-cultural society, the
more amazed and thankful I am that God moved the Master Planning
Team and the elders to elevate Racial Reconciliation to
one of our six fresh initiatives.

In Wednesday's paper I read these words,

There is strong evidence that stressing differences does little
to improve race relations, and may even exacerbate them.

For example, the Minneapolis and St. Paul school districts have
made costly diversity education a top priority for decades.
Nevertheless, the Minneapolis district recently announced that
"embedded racism" continues to permeate its schools, while a 1994
study by People for the American Way found that "race relations and
tolerance" in St. Paul high schools are "crumbling." (Katherine
Kersten, "'Diversity Training' Efforts Proceed from False Premise,"
StarTribune, January 10, 1996, p. A13)

And the situation is not good in the churches either. I have
heard of demeaning and damaging remarks in our own church about
minority groups. And a black pastor told me recently that one of
his black members was provoked at a new white attendee and said, "I
have to hassle with white people all week long; I don't want to
have to in the church on Sunday."

So the time is ripe for us as a church to put some fresh energy
behind this issue and work on it. To that end I want to lay a biblical foundation in the form of eight theses.

1. God made all ethnic groups from one human ancestor.

Acts 17:26:

[God] made from one, every nation [pan
ethnos = every ethnic group] of mankind to live on all the
face of the earth, having determined their appointed
times, and the boundaries of their habitation.

Notice two things from this text.

First, notice that God is the MAKER of ethnic groups. "God
made from one every nation." Ethnic groups do not just
come about by random genetic change. They come about by God's
design and purpose. The text says plainly, "GOD made every
ethnos."

Second, notice that God made all the ethnic groups from one
human ancestor. Paul says, "He made FROM ONE every
ethnos." This has a special wallop when you ponder why he
chose to say just this to these Athenians on the Areopagus. The
Athenians were fond of boasting that they were
autochthones, which means that they sprang from their
native soil and were not immigrants from some other place or people
group. (See Lenski and Bruce, ad. loc.) Paul chooses to confront
this ethnic pride head on. God made all the ethnic
groups—Athenians and Barbarians—and he made them out of
one common stock. So you Athenians are cut from the same cloth as
those despised Barbarians and Scythians.

2. All members of every ethnic group are made in the image of
God.

Genesis 1:27:

God created man in His own image, in the image of
God He created him; male and female He created them.

When you put this teaching of Genesis 1 (that God created the
first man in his image) together with the teaching of Acts 17:26
(that God made all the ethnic groups from this first ancestor),
what emerges is that all members of all ethnic groups are made in
the image of God.

No matter what the skin color or facial features or hair texture
or other genetic traits, every human being in every ethnic group
has an immortal soul in the image of God: a mind with unique,
God-like reasoning powers, a heart with capacities for moral
judgments and spiritual affections, and a potential for
relationship with God that sets every person utterly apart from all
the animals which God has made. Every human being, whatever color,
shape, age, gender, intelligence, health, or social class, is made
in the image of God.

3. In determining the significance of who you are, being a
person in the image of God compares to ethnic distinctives the way
the noonday sun compares to a candlestick.

In other words, finding your main identity in whiteness or
blackness or any other ethnic color or trait is like boasting that
you carry a candle to light the cloudless noonday sky. Candles have
their place. But not to light the day. So color and ethnicity have
their place, but not as the main glory and wonder of our identity
as human beings. The primary glory of who we are is what unites us
in our God-like humanity, not what differentiates us in our
ethnicity.

This is the most fundamental reason why programs of "diversity
training" usually backfire in their attempt to foster mutual
respect among ethnic groups. They focus major attention on what is
comparatively minor, and virtually no attention on what is
infinitely, gloriously major—our common, unique standing
among all creation as persons created in the image of God.

If our sons and our daughters have a hundred eggs, let us teach
them to put ninety-nine eggs in the basket called personhood in the
image of God and one egg in the basket called ethnic
distinction.

4. The prediction of a curse that Noah spoke over some of the
descendants of Ham in Genesis 9:25 is irrelevant in deciding how
the black race is to be viewed and treated.

Over the centuries some people have tried to prove that the
black race is destined to be subservient because of Noah's words
over his son Ham who was the father of the African peoples. Let's
look at the actual text of Scripture and then I will give three
reasons why it does not prescribe how the peoples of Africa are to
be viewed and treated. Recall that Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham,
and Japheth.

Genesis 9:21–25:

And [Noah] drank of the wine and became drunk,
and uncovered himself inside his tent. 22 And Ham, the father of
Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers
outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon
both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness
of their father; and their faces were turned away, so that they did
not see their father's nakedness. 24 When Noah awoke from his wine,
he knew what his youngest son had done to him. 25 So he said,
"Cursed be [or: "will be"] Canaan; a servant of servants He shall
be to his brothers."

Now notice three things:

Noah's Curse Falls upon Canaan

First, Noah takes this occasion of the sin of his son Ham, and
uses it to make a prediction about the posterity of Ham's youngest
son, Canaan. Basically the prediction is that the Canaanites will
eventually be overpowered by the descendants of Shem and
Japheth.

Now there are many questions to ask here. But I only have time
to point out a few things relevant to our main point. Ham had four
sons, according to Genesis 10:6. "The sons of Ham were
Cush and Mizraim and Put and Canaan." Now broadly speaking Cush is
probably the ancestor of the peoples of Ethiopia; Mizraim is the
ancestor of the Egyptians; and Put is the ancestor of the peoples
of northern Africa, the Libyans. But Canaan is the one son of the
four who is the not the ancestor of African peoples. Genesis
10:15–18 names the descendants of Canaan: "And Canaan became the
father of Sidon, his first-born, and Heth 16 and the Jebusite and
the Amorite and the Girgashite 17 and the Hivite and the Arkite and
the Sinite 18 and the Arvadite and the Zemarite and the Hamathite."
All those peoples were the inhabitants of Canaan and its vicinity,
not Africa. And the prediction of Noah came true when the Canaanite
nations were driven out by the Israelites because of their
wickedness (Deuteronomy 9:4–5). So the curse doesn't fall on the
African peoples but on the Canaanites.

Noah's Curse Is Not About Individuals

Second, the predicted curse of Noah does not dictate how God's
people should treat individual Canaanites. For example, five
chapters later in Genesis 14:18, Abraham, the descendant of Seth,
meets a native Canaanite, named Melchizedek, who was a righteous man
and "priest of God Most High" and who blessed Abraham. Abraham gave
him a tenth of his spoils. So not even the fact that God ordains to
bring judgment on evil nations dictates for us how we are to treat
individuals in those nations.

God Plans Redemption for All Nations

Third, in Genesis 12 God sets in motion a great plan of
redemption for all the nations to rescue them from this and every
other curse of sin and judgment. He calls Abram from all the
nations and makes a covenant with him and promises, "I will bless
those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And
in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
"All the families of the earth" include the Canaanite families.

So what we see is that with Abraham God is setting in motion a
plan of redemption that overturns every curse for everyone who
receives the blessing of Abraham, namely, the forgiveness and
acceptance of God that come through Jesus Christ, the seed of
Abraham (Galatians 3:13–14). Which leads
us to the fifth
thesis:

5. It is God's purpose and command that we make disciples for
Jesus Christ from every ethnic group in the world, without
distinction.

Matthew 28:18–20:

All authority has been given to Me in heaven
and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded
you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Make disciples of "all nations"—that is, every ethnic
group. It's the same phrase as in Acts 17:26, where it says he made
from one "every nation"—every ethnic group. Just as all
ethnic groups are created in the image of God, so God aims to
redeem people from every ethnic group. Being in God's image doesn't
mean we are saved. We are all distorted by sin. The unique ways
that we were created to reflect the glory and worth of God have
been largely ruined. So God has sent his Son, Jesus, into the world
to die for us so that we might believe on him and be forgiven and
cleansed and restored, and become trophies of his grace.

6. All believers in Jesus Christ, of every ethnic group, are
united to each other not only in a common humanity in the image of
God, but even more, as brothers and sisters in Christ and members
of the same body.

Romans 12:4–5:

Just as we have many members in one body and all
the members do not have the same function, 5 so we, who are many,
are one body in Christ, and individually members one of
another.

The body of Christ has a black hand and white wrist and yellow
arm and a red shoulder. And the white wrist cannot say to the black
hand, "I have no need of you" (1 Corinthians 12:21). And the yellow
arm cannot say to the red shoulder, "Because I am not a shoulder, I
am not a part of the body" (1 Corinthians 12:15).

The other image besides one body is one family.

1 John 3:1:

See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon
us, that we should be called children of God; and such we
are.

In other words, if our identity as human persons created in the
image of God is greater than all ethnic distinctives (#3 above),
then our identity as re-born children of God is even
greater still than all ethnic differences. I would put it like
this: The glory of our family likeness in Christ is as much greater
than our ethnic differences as the ocean is greater than a
thimble.

It was a great truth that we saw earlier—that we are more
united by our humanity than separated by
our ethnicity. But it is an even greater truth that in
Christ we have unity upon unity. On top of a common human
personhood in the image of God, we have a common redeemed
personhood in the image of Christ. And how much less are we to be
divided by our ethnic differences! "[There is not] Greek and Jew,
circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and
freeman, but Christ is all, and in all" (Colossians 3:11).

7. The Bible forbids intermarriage between believer and
unbeliever but not between members of different ethnic groups.

1 Corinthians 7:39:

A wife is bound as long as her husband
lives; but if her husband is dead, she is free to be married to
whom she wishes, only in the Lord.

"Only in the Lord." The Bible directs us plainly not to marry
unbelievers. If we are already married to an unbeliever, we are to
stay married (1 Corinthians 7:12–13; 1 Peter 3:1–6). But if we are
free to marry, we are to marry only one who shares our allegiance
to Jesus.

This was the main point of the Old Testament warnings about
marrying those among the pagan nations. For example, Deuteronomy
7:3–4,

You shall not intermarry with [the nations]; you shall not give
your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters
for your sons. 4 For they will turn your sons away from
following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the LORD
will be kindled against you.

The issue is not color mixing, or customs mixing, or clan
identity. The issue is: will there be one common allegiance to the
true God in this marriage or will there be divided affections? The
prohibition in God's Word is not against interracial marriage, but
against marriage between believer and unbeliever. And this is
exactly what we would expect if the great ground of our identity is
not our ethnic differences but our common humanity in the image of
God and our new humanity in the image of Christ.

8. (Initiative #3) Therefore, against the rising spirit of
indifference, alienation, and hostility in our land, we will embrace
the supremacy of God's love to take new steps personally and
corporately toward racial reconciliation, expressed visibly in our
community and in our church.

Let us banish every belittling and unloving thought from our
minds.

Let us put every word or tone of ridicule or disdain out of our
mouths.

Let us go out of our way to show personal, affectionate oneness
with Christians of all ethnic backgrounds.

Let us be the salt and the light of our hostile and fearful
society with courageous acts of inter-racial kindness and
respect.

In short, let us look to Christ and be forgiven and cleansed and
healed and empowered to love.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

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